Hi,On search of "Lulu" I don't find a thread about this, so here's a quick start:

Lulu (book POD printer) says using the Mac OS print engine to make PDFs is a bad idea. Says to use Acrobat.

I've been ignoring them for several years, because Acrobat is expensive and making PDFs directly from Nisus (using Mac engine I believe) is convenient. I've made several books this way that Lulu has printed. No trouble with them until now -- including also early proofs at Xerox printers at the local copy store, and my own inkjets.

Now, latest version of latest book, there's an annoying omission of the footnote separator lines in *some pages* in the physically printed book that Lulu sent. (Line is definitely correctly there everywhere in my PDF and in Lulu's 'post-conversion' PDF that they sent me to check prior to printing).

I have not used this service myself. Have you asked in one of the Lulu forums? There is an old thread there about creating a PDF on a Mac. The oldest post is from 2008 and the last one I found is from 2010. That in itself is rather strange.

Anyway, one of Lulu's recommendations for making a PDF on a Mac is to create a PostScript file and send it to Lulu.com, and they will turn the PostScript into a PDF for you. — Saving a Nisus document as PostScript is done via the printing dialog.

I regularly use NWP > PDF for 100 to 300 page books. Some of these include header graphics, multiple columns, multiple colors, foot note separator lines, etc. These have been printed through traditional printers on digital web and offset presses without any issues.

I would wonder if it might not be a unique combination of something in the Mac engine and Lulu's set up, not exclusively an issue with the Mac engine. Otherwise it seems the "noise" about Mac's engine would be far greater given the number of folks who generate books with it.

I have not used this service myself. Have you asked in one of the Lulu forums? There is an old thread there about creating a PDF on a Mac. The oldest post is from 2008 and the last one I found is from 2010. That in itself is rather strange.

Thanks Þorvarður,I've recently found the Lulu official statements about not using Quartz -- but that was after several years of using Quartz successfully and not knowing that I couldn't.

Good idea about forums, I should have gone there first -- they used to be too clunky to use, but this time I had an easy time negotiating and found a newer thread (2015), which interestingly contradicts the Lulu official line. Apparently there are Lulu Mac users who print from Mac Quartz regularly and just say 'check the PDF on download to make sure it's OK'.

And mine was OK. The problem comes with one of Lulu's printers. And still the Lulu tech support wants me to buy Acrobat Pro so they won't have this problem. Seems backwards to me. Apple is the second-largest corp. in the world, and there must be hundreds of thousands of people (more, millions) printing PDFs and using them from their built-in engine. Anyway, I'm ranting. I'll tell this to the Lulu tech. Not that they'll change for me.

I would wonder if it might not be a unique combination of something in the Mac engine and Lulu's set up, not exclusively an issue with the Mac engine. Otherwise it seems the "noise" about Mac's engine would be far greater given the number of folks who generate books with it.

Mike

Thanks Mike.This was what I suspected. I've quoted your post as part of my reply to Lulu tech. Perhaps it will have some effect.

I regularly use NWP > PDF for 100 to 300 page books. Some of these include header graphics, multiple columns, multiple colors, foot note separator lines, etc. These have been printed through traditional printers on digital web and offset presses without any issues. Mike

Interesting. Were these all "Save as PDF", or did you use PDF-X at all, via the Preview dialog?

I'm intrigued about publishing books out of NWP. Might I ask what sort of books do you publish?

Cheers, Geoff

Well...that's a pretty open-ended question, and maybe hard for me to answer — "what sort" — without some more guidance about what you mean. And perhaps the answer is out of the scope of this forum, I'm not sure.

I'd be happy to answer any specific questions about how well I've found NWP does layout for print, etc.

But I haven't done many books; perhaps you could ask ProfT, who seems to have done a lot.

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